Robby Report

Oh man, do you love that cheek resting on the window sill? You just want to eat it, huh?

This is where Robby has spent lots of time lately. The neighbors across the street are putting in a swimming pool. This means trucks of all kinds have been coming and going- making for the best entertainment for our little truck-loving boy! On this day, the cement truck was churning, steaming, and making lots of noise. I couldn't hardly pull him away from the window.

And since we're talking about our little Robby, here's a quick Robby Report:

Robby loves his new found freedom that has come with learning to walk. Most days it seems as though he has some type of agenda- things he needs to get done. I'll be working in the kitchen and he'll come toddling past, flashing me the cutest semi-toothy grin and then he'll keep right on walking. He'll head to the pantry as if he's got some pressing business in there. A few minutes later, he emerges with a can of food clutched in his cute little, chubby hands. He then heads directly to some odd place in the house and places the item. He's our little relocator. He'll do the same thing with shoes. He just picks up a pair of shoes and heads off to put them someplace he thinks they belong. Needless to say, we find things in odd places all over the house. If you're looking for your shoes, you might want to check the window sill or the shelf in the laundry room.

He loves being read to. If you're ever sitting down for a minute or two, he'll toddle over with a book in hand, wanting to be read to. And of course, he likes the same three books over and over again, one of which is a truck book with every kind of truck imaginable.

He loves to play ball...by himself. Sometimes he reminds us of a little puppy. He has a little basketball and another bouncy ball that he'll throw, chase down, and throw again- over and over and over again. It's great because he keeps himself busy and he is so cute giggling and chasing. It's very fun to watch.

He loves playing with his big brother. My favorite is seeing them perched side by side on the little picnic table in Tyler's room- Tyler working on Legos and Robby usually pushing a truck around.

He loves to "wrestle" with Tyler. He giggles and growls and rolls around and it is pretty hilarious.

Robby loves his blankies. Frequently when he wakes up, he likes to spend a few extra minutes cuddling with his blankets in his crib and often times he'll hand one over to me and wants me to cuddle it too. It's like it's so great he has to share!

And then there's bath time...what kid doesn't love bath time? He can splash so hard that it looks like there was a typhoon in the bathroom. He gets both arms into it and giggles with his mouth wide open. And if Tyler is bathing with him, it's double the fun, double the giggles, and double the mess! Tyler will blow big bubbles for Robby and recently, Robby has tried doing it himself, but usually ends up choking and sputtering instead.

Robby is a true joy. We love this little guy and we are so glad he is a part of our family. I am sometimes overcome with gratitude for both of my sweet boys. Life is good.

Christmas (part 3)

As part of the Carson family tradition, Santa dropped by and left dinner on Christmas Eve. We found it out the window and on the roof this year! This dinner is always my favorite- Hickory Farms meats, cheeses of every kind, crackers, dips, spreads, little breads, and a yummie fruit platter. It was delicious!

Tyler was proud of himself for trying a little bit of almost everything.

No Christmas Eve would be complete without reinacting the Nativity. Tyler chose to be Joseph. He was so cute and a little shy (although you'd never guess it from this picture).

(I have the most darling video clip of Tyler playing his role of Joseph, but I just can't seem to get it to load onto blogger. I'll try again another time. He was very funny with pretty good comedic timing.)
Robby got to play the role of baby Jesus.

We sang Christmas carols, and then headed off to bed to wait for Santa!

The next morning brought lots of surprises and excitement for the kiddos. Tyler was thrilled that Santa remembered he liked Transformers and Robby seemed to really like his barking puppy; although he was more impressed with Tyler's ambulance toy, especially when he had a real dog to chase around and play with during the trip.

Is there anything more fun than seeing your kid's faces light up on Christmas morning? Pretty cute!

Just before opening presents, Tyler and Jonah decided they wanted to act out the Nativity one more time, only this time around, Tyler opted for a different role. He's so cute and innocent, I just love it!

It was a lovely Christmas. I will cherish many memories and moments for years to come!

Christmas (part 2)

Once we arrived in Colorado, we let the good times roll!

I should mention here that John's sister and her husband are not only gracious, kind, and fun, but they have the coolest kids ever! Tyler and Jonah pick right up where they left off and play together like old time friends. Jake is witty, fun, keeps us laughing, and is so sweet to our boys. And Jaelynn is the smartest, prettiest, and most intelligent young lady you'll ever meet (and she did a fantastic job of teaching Robby to walk!). We are so glad they let us come and play with them.

Here are a few of the fun things we did:

On one of our first days there, we went sledding. Tyler jumped out of the car, grabbed a sled, and attacked the hill head first before anyone else could even catch up. I could hardly get him to hold still for a picture, he was having so much fun.

Robby, um well, you guessed it. Not such a fan. I don't know if it was the cold, the unsteady surface, or just all that white stuff. Whatever it was, Robby didn't like it. Sometimes it's so funny to see how different these two boys are.

We played lots of games.

and we made gingerbread houses.

The boys had lots of time to play in the snow. On this particular snow outing, we saw Tyler and Jonah standing on the trampoline looking over the fence into the neighbor's yard. From the window, we watched them stand there for several minutes. I told Joleen, "I really hope Tyler isn't thinking about jumping over that fence." A while later when I asked Tyler what they were doing looking over the fence, Tyler told me, "Oh, I was just telling Jonah that I wanted to jump over the fence to play in all the fresh snow in the other yard, but I didn't know how I would get back to Jonah's house if I did." I just laughed. First, I'm glad I can read that boy's thoughts and second, I'm thrilled that he actually thought through the consequences of his actions before he did something crazy.

We went ice skating and arrived at the rink only about 20 minutes before they closed. And you know what? That was plenty of time for us!!!

The boys had a ball with their cousins. I just wish I had a picture of Jaelynn teaching Robby to walk! She was so good to him and would whisk him away to play any time I needed a break or was busy helping in the kitchen.

Not only was Robby totally enthralled and entertained by his cousins, but he was completely thrilled to play with their cute, little dog. Oh, that sweet dog sure put up with a lot that week we were there! Robby liked to pet him and poke his nose. Here are two videos. The first one was taken at the beginning of the week. The dog was in his kennel and was barking, which he normally doesn't do, so it completely frightened Robby.

But by the end of the week, we glanced over and saw Robby leaning his head over on top of the dog, which is his way of giving hugs. We grabbed the camera and made him do it again because it was so adorable (Don't mind the pink bink. It was the only color Walmart had left).

We did lots of fun activities, had a great time just hanging out, and ate ridiculously good food. What could be better than that?!?

Christmas (part 1)

Okay, I'm finally getting around to posting about Christmas...better late than never (plus I'm only a month behind...)

Last year Christmas was such a blur. We left for Utah when Robby was only six weeks old. Packing for two kids, plus snow stuff, plus Christmas stuff just about did me in. On top of all of that Robby still wasn't sleeping through the night and I was only beginning to uncover his dairy problem so he was fussy and uncomfortable most of the time. Needless to say, it was a stressful time and I look back and wish I could say that I had taken more time to savor the holidays.

This year we were able to do just that. I felt like we had more meaningful, spiritual experiences as a family. We were able to slow down and take it all in a bit. However, we were not quite ready to spend a Christmas on our own, so we decided to drive the 15 hour drive to Colorado to spend a week with John's sister and her family. And we are so glad we did! It was a wonderful, fun, and memorable trip.

About the drive...all I can say is, I love my van, I love my van, I love my van. It was so nice to have plenty of room to spread out, sleep, and pack as much stuff as we wanted. We even let the boys get their wiggles out by jumping, westling, and rolling around the empty back seat every once in a while. Perfect! It's a long drive, but the boys did great. Here are a few snap shots of our "car fun."

When we got to West Texas, we were thrilled to see that they were still in the middle of harvesting the cotton from the cotton plants. At one rest stop, we couldn't resist running over to check out one of the bales of cotton. Tyler thought it was pretty cool and took a few minutes to jump into a huge pile that had fall apart from one of the bales.

To keep the boys busy, we borrowed my friend Laura's idea to bring along a roll of tin foil for tin foil sculptures. It was AWESOME. Tyler was engaged in this activity for over an hour. We made a tin foil chain that we had hoped would decorate the entire van, as well as several cool hats.

Tyler made a cool monster guy,

And we made several creations for dad to wear while driving (what a good sport, huh?)
We made it to Colorado all in one piece and ready for lots of holiday fun with family and cousins.

Finals

Another major event for us each year in December is John's completion of his fall semester class. In addition to classwork, this year John also completed the first draft of his dissertation. He is only three semesters away from completing his Doctorate degree (can a get a hallelujia, please?) As you can imagine, John's studies have become a major part of daily life for us.

Here is Robby helping him study for his final.

And here is a picture taken back in 2007 of Tyler helping with the same task.

I love these pictures. I love how they sum up "our" experience in post graduate studies.

John is a dedicated father and he stays so well balanced. I am proud of how hard he works. I'm also proud of how well he has involved us in the process and at the same time has stayed involved in our lives as well.

Love you, sweetie! Keep up the good work!!

Christmas Program

Among many of the joys of having a preschooler is the ever exciting Christmas program. Admittedly, I was excited for this one. Having taught first grade for almost five years, it was fun being on the other side of the fence this time. However, I was not one of those overly excited parents who arrive 30 minutes early to get good seats so that they can get a good photo, and I was also not one of the pushy parents who jumps in front of the parents with the good seats during the performance to get a good photo, so that explains my lack of a better picture. Tyler is on the top row, far left.

He did a great job, sang most of the words, and really got into his guitar solo. And in all honesty, I was very proud of the fact that he wasn't goofing around and falling off the stage!

We love our preschool cutie!

Santa Visit

I fear that if I skip over all the things we did in December and go straight for the post about our Christmas, I'll forget a lot of the fun things we did. So no worries, Grandma, we'll get a picture of the boys on Christmas morning soon, but I got a little catching up to do first.

At the beginning of December I organized the Christmas social event for our neighborhood. It was a lot of fun. We had cookies and hot chocolate, carolers, a toy drive for our community storehouse, and a visit from Santa.

When it was Tyler's turn to visit Santa, he was sure to ask Santa how come he is so magical (cute). Robby, on the other hand, wanted to have nothing to do with the bearded stranger. This came as no surprise to me.

Being the good parents that we are, we made him sit on Santa's lap anyway.

Five

I'm a little late getting caught up with posts, but I don't regret stepping away from the computer lately so that I could take time to enjoy the holidays with my little family.

On the 14th Tyler turned five. When he woke up that morning, he quietly came into my bedroom and stood by my bed and said, "Mommy, I'm five now!" That's when it hit me. Five feels so grown up to me- he's no longer a baby, toddler, or even preschool aged. He has grown up more this last year than any other year. It's good and I love seeing who he is becoming, but I do miss my tiny baby boy.

This year we decided to have a friend birthday party. Tyler has been planning on a Transformer theme party for quite a few months now. It was a lot of fun (and a lot of work too).

The kids were given a letter from Optimus Prime who needed their help locating the Alspark. They had to successfully complete several missions to do so. First they had to find and collect all of the lost autobots in their individual colors.

Then they had to land one Starscream airplane on the planet "Galvatron"

And finally we played a game of musical autobots (musical chairs)

We had cake and ice cream.

And opened presents

Later that night we celebrated in style as a family with matching autobot shirts (my awesome friend Emily emailed the symbol to me along with directions for printing and ironing onto t-shirts).

The final activity of the night was a scavenger hunt to find his new bike hidden in the fort in our backyard (I'm not sure why I didn't get a picture of this, but he was pretty excited).

It was a great day with lots of fun and excitement. But even with all the activities and planning, I still had a moment to stop and ponder how grateful I am for our sweet Tyler. He has brought so much love and joy into our hearts. I can't imagine our life without this amazingly sweet and delightful little boy!